{"id":30297,"date":"2013-07-25T15:46:10","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T15:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=30297"},"modified":"2014-02-10T17:45:22","modified_gmt":"2014-02-10T17:45:22","slug":"mcarter","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=30297","title":{"rendered":"The Carter Name"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"03-06-Carter,Mike\"<\/a>
Photo Courtesy of California
Historical Society, MSP 3800<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was 1980, two years after Mike Prokes, my brother Tim, and I escaped the deaths in Jonestown. I had a job repairing office equipment. I would travel from office to office repairing equipment. In that type of a job, I interacted with dozens of people every day. Typically there would be a bit of small talk during my visits, usually about the weather or current events.<\/p>\n

Tim and I were living in Boise, Idaho at the time, and there had been a lot of coverage about Jonestown. Because of our local connection, we were mentioned in the press often. At the same time, the country as a whole was having a lot of issues, and much of the blame was being placed on the shoulders of President Jimmy Carter.<\/p>\n

One day, as I was talking with a woman, somehow my last name came up. I mentioned how unpopular the name \u201cCarter\u201d was at that time because of the country\u2019s dissatisfaction with the President. She agreed. \u201cYes, and those \u2018Carter\u2019 brothers too.\u201d I tried not to react, but when she looked at me and realized that I was one of the \u201cCarter Brothers,\u201d she was immediately embarrassed and maybe even afraid. I did my best to put her at ease. My work was done and I left soon thereafter.<\/p>\n

The memory of that encounter has always stayed with me because of how shocked I was, that even what I thought was a safe conversation could turn into a difficult and uncomfortable interaction about my relationship with the Peoples Temple.<\/p>\n

(Mike Carter is a regular contributor to <\/i>the jonestown report. His complete collection of stories for this site may be found here<\/a>.)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was 1980, two years after Mike Prokes, my brother Tim, and I escaped the deaths in Jonestown. I had a job repairing office equipment. I would travel from office to office repairing equipment. In that type of a job, I interacted with dozens of people every day. Typically there would be a bit of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":30202,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-30297","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30297"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56122,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30297\/revisions\/56122"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}